Small ball took a beating. World Series Game 4 made for a forgettable, unaesthetic evening, what with its 13 pitchers and an 11–7 final in favor of Texas that camouflaged the rout that it truly was.
It seems its entire purpose was to snicker at the over-the-top love for small ball in Game 2, when Arizona joined the 1908 Cubs, masters of the Deadball Era and of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance mellifluous fame, as the only teams with 12 singles, three sac bunts and one stolen base in a World Series game. It was so long ago that crossword puzzles, traffic lights and the Panama Canal didn’t exist, and fathers named their sons Mordecai and Orval.
For a brief moment, such esoterica were the future of baseball, with the young, athletic Diamondbacks dropping bunts and stealing bases to leverage the new rules, or so went the armchair swooning over that 9–1 Arizona win.
It’s just not true. Small ball is like owning a ’69 Triumph TR6. It’s cute and fun, but it’s not going to help your cousin move out of his apartment or get you where you need to go in lousy weather. It has its place. It’s just not to win championships.
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You want what wins championships? You want what the Rangers put on display in Game 4: ferocious power and brand-name certifiable, expensive superstars. On a night All-Star outfielder Adolis García and three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer joined two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom as non-rostered injured players, the Rangers still had Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, All-Star middle infielders signed two years ago for half-a-billion dollars, drive in seven runs before the D-Backs sent an eighth batter to the plate. Five of those RBI came on the best play in baseball, bunts be damned: the multi-run home run.
You can break down the World Series to its atomic matter all you like. But nothing better explains why Texas, up three games to one, is one win away from its first world title than this: The Rangers smash the baseball. Some in-your-face truths:
- The Rangers have scored 57% of their World Series runs on homers (12 of 21).
- They have been out-hit in the series, 42–29, but what matters is they have out-homered Arizona, 7–3.
- Every inning in which Texas gained the decisive lead included a home run.
- Teams are 23–4 this postseason when they outhomer the opponent, including Game 4 going to Texas with a 3–1 dinger edge.
“This lineup,” said Rangers outfielder Robbie Grossman, “is loaded. It’s been like this all year. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Rob Schumacher/Arizona Republic/USA TODAY NETWORK
After only 19 batters, Texas led 10–0 and Arizona manager Torey Lovullo already had burned through four pitchers in a vain attempt to put out the raging fire. He tore up his opener script.
Seager smashed a two-run homer in the second. Semien smashed a three-run homer in third. The homers echoed the two-run homer by Seager that flipped Game 1 from a loss toward a win (a win secured by a García home run) and the two-run homer by Seager that broke open Game 3.
“We can string together hits with the best of them and score some runs,” says Texas reliever Will Smith, “but if we’ve got two guys on, we always have the chance of it being a three-run inning or a four-run inning. It just takes one of our guys catching one on the barrel. And they’re strong enough and such good hitters that, you know, like Marcus tonight, he can flip the game.”
To win the series, Arizona needs to win three in a row against a team with decidedly more firepower. The D-Backs, which ranked 22nd in home runs, are trying to become the first team since the 2015 Royals to win a World Series with an offense that ranked below 13th in home runs. It was a quaint idea two games ago, but not it appears the game is not ready to turn back to that time, not yet.
Hopefully the new rules and the D-Backs’ National League pennant encourage more teams to embrace moving runners and stealing bases. Baseball is at its entertaining best with diverse styles of play, not the Three True Outcome static style that dominated the previous decade, when every club was reading off the same sheet of music. Small ball works as a complement to power—creating paths to victory when home runs dry up against better pitching—not as a raison d’etre.
To hang with the Rangers (third in the majors in home runs), the Diamondbacks are going to have to bang the baseball a bit more. In World Series history teams have an .824 winning percentage when they hit three homers, as Texas did in Game 4 (61–13).
“Marcus and Corey, early in the game was big,” said Texas hitting coach Donnie Ecker. “Getting home runs with runners on base is always huge. It's the quick strike, whereas the stolen base and the bunt, it's a grind.
“I mean, there are a bunch of different ways to score, but it's certainly nice when you can change the scoreboard that fast. I think that’s what those guys have the potential to do every time they hit.”
Semien and Seager, the pillars of the Ranger reno project when they took the half-billion two years ago, combined for two homers, a double, a triple and seven RBI. Their homers followed key mistakes by the D-Backs that exposed the young team’s fragility: a two-strike, two-out wild pitch on a changeup from Miguel Castro that Gabriel Moreno could not block and a dropped grounder by first baseman Christian Walker. In isolation, the mistakes were bad but not terrible. But it’s how Arizona reacted to them that hurt. A spigot opened. Each mistake was followed by five runs.
Seager has homered three times in his past 15 at-bats. Arizona either is making especially horrid mistakes with location—a Paul Sewald fastball, a Brandon Pfaadt changeup and a Kyle Nelson slider—or it still thinks it can get away with throwing Seager anything in the zone.
“Whether he strikes out or hits a homer, he has the same exact process,” Ecker said. “He doesn't let the emotion get into it. He goes back, he analyzes the movement of it all, and then he makes his adjustment every at bat. So, he's unemotional about this process.”
After Semien clobbered a three-run jack in the third, he pointed toward his family in the stands. To accommodate his wife, parents and four children, Semien took seven rooms at the team hotel, including a quiet room just for his sleep.
“Marcus,” first baseman Nathaniel Lowe told him, “for all you’re paying, you’re playing this series for free.”
Said Semien about his salute to his family: “Big moment for all my family in the stands, just to see me play in the World Series. I appreciate them giving me the support—my wife, my parents, my children. Those people would be cheering for me if I do well or if I don’t. Those are the people who mean everything to me.”
Rob Schumacher/Arizona Republic/USA TODAY NETWORK
Before the game, Texas took Scherzer (back spasms) and García (oblique) off their roster because of injuries. Ecker asked García to speak to the team in the pregame hitters’ meeting.
“I wanted him to stay involved,” Ecker said. “He means so much to us, I wanted him to continue to be a part of this and to have the guys know he’s still a big reason why we’re here.”
When Lowe took to the field in the bottom of the first, he told first base umpire Vic Carapazza: “No wonder the guy’s back is sore. He’s been carrying us a long time.”
García set a postseason record with 22 RBI. He won Game 1 with that walkoff homer off Castro. So dangerous had García been that as he walked to the plate for that at-bat, infielder Josh Smith turned to reliever Will Smith next to him and said, “I’ve never been so sure of anybody hitting a walkoff homer like I am right now.”
Said Will: “If he hits a walkoff homer, I’ll buy the best bottle of your choice.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when García connected. The next day negotiations between Smith and Smith began in earnest. Josh said he was thinking about a $15,000 bottle of bourbon. Will declined and he suggested he’d come up with an alternative.
“He knows his bourbon, more than I do,” Josh said. “So, I trust him to come up with something good.”
Says Will: “I did the same thing in 2021 with the [Braves] trainer. It wasn’t the World Series, but it was the Dodgers Series. It was Austin Riley. Right before he gets that walkoff, I told the trainer: ‘If Austin Riley hits a walkoff right here, I’ll buy you whatever you want.’
“And sure enough, he walks it off. I got him what he wanted and gave it to him the next day. He said, ‘When we win this whole thing, we’ll drink it.’ And we did.”
Now the Rangers are one win away from toasting their first championship (and Will Smith his third title in three years with three teams, making him a regular Victory Faust). Only Cleveland has a longer current drought than the Rangers’ 0-for-63. Texas was one strike away from a title three times in 2011 Game 6, but fell to St. Louis, 10–9, in 11 innings.
The next night they scored in the top of the first to take a 2–0 lead but blew that advantage, too. They lost, 6–2. Those twin giveaways were the start of six straight losses in potential clinchers for the franchise.
Then this year happened, a year in which deGrom, Scherzer, García, Seager, Nathan Eovaldi, Jonah Heim and Josh Jung all missed wide swaths of playing time. The Rangers remained undeterred, even when they blew the division title with a final day 1–0 loss in Seattle. That anger bonded them, not to mention so much of the postseason spent in the air and on the road. They are 10–0 on the road this postseason.
“Don’t let us bat first,” Grossman said with a wry grin.
They took out Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Houston with the first chances they got. Now another one presents itself in Game 5, the biggest of all.
Texas lost more games the past two years than anybody in the American League (196). The run of the Rangers may be surprising, but it is not subtle. They signed and traded for Semien, Seager, deGrom, Scherzer, Andrew Heaney (their Game 4 winner), Nathan Eovaldi (Game 5 starter), Aroldis Chapman and Jordan Montgomery, who are playing under $875 million worth of contracts.
They spent big. They swung big. They hit 233 home runs in the regular season, the most of any winning Texas team. After hitting no homers in their first postseason game, a 4–0 jet-lagged win at Tampa Bay after that long flight from Seattle, Texas has homered in 15 straight games, a record in one postseason. They have hit 29 bombs in those 15 games.
The past three World Series winners ranked first (2020 Dodgers), third (2021 Braves) and fourth (2022 Astros) in home runs. The Rangers, who hit more homers than every team but the Braves and Dodgers, are trying to follow the same path to the title.
“Yeah, it’s hard on a pitcher,” Will Smith said about his team’s lineup. “It’s back-breaking sometimes, what this team can do. We get a couple guys on and then all hell breaks loose.”
